


1969

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Future Fic, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-27
Updated: 2005-07-27
Packaged: 2018-05-17 13:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5870677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin





	1969

 

 

 

 

 

Brian likes to think about it as rewriting love; if you are a priest you can always look it up in the book, but when you are prophet it´s hard to tell where the truth lies.

If you tell anyone the Brian Kinney is a romantic they´d probably laugh at you.

Brian would probably laugh at you.

All the same he wakes up each day and tries to make a difference, because it´s not love he has a problem with, it´s their definition of love.

He motions to the boy who has just given him an average and quite boring blow-job.

"Hey, give me your cell phone, mine´s just run out of battery."

The boy looks confused for a moment, then searches his pockets obediently, eager to please. Brian examines him for a moment, under the violet artificial lights and through the smoke in the air. He is beautiful, a little too beautiful, and Brian has never liked those haunted-wannabe eyes and the frailty in his jaw.

From the other side of the line comes a rushed and clear voice; it is so familiar that Brian cannot recognize it.

He can hear the noise of construction outside in the background, behind the tentative "hello?".

"Look, I´m too stoned to be calling you."

"Okay," Justin answers, and Brian wishes he hadn´t picked such a bad time to turn monosyllabic on him, because the main reason for this call (apart from the amount of drugs in his blood) is hearing Justin´s voice. And that is also the main reason why this call is a bad idea.

"I´m too stoned to not be calling you."

For a moment the silence makes him think Justin has hung up.

"What does that mean, Brian?"

And it´s Brian who hangs up, and because he knows Justin he turns off the cell phone, he even ponders changing his number.

There is a time when even Brian Kinney does not have the energy to lie anymore.

 

\--

 

When he sees Ben and Michael he wants to punch things; it´s a cheap feeling, like an ecologist watching the Amazon burn. He doesn´t know who he feels worse for, it should be Michael but in the end the only sympathy he has left is for Hunter. The boy had possibilities, but Brian saw it clear one day he stopped at Michael´s, The Stooges´ _1969_ was playing loudly from Hunter´s room and Brian thought that it was a pity, no matter how wild and special he was just then, that fleeting moment, he would grow into the next generation of gays, the sons of Bens and Michaels and to Brian that was like living after a nuclear apocalypse.

He remembers when Michael used to be that young and wild, in his own way, before he outgrew Brian, and Brian outgrew his need for Michael.

He thinks about that time, that precise moment he looked at Hunter and he knew they had lost the war.

But Brian still had many battles to go.

One day he confessed it to Justin, dead-serious, stilling the boy´s arm against the kitchen table: _If you turn me into something like that I swear I´ll kick you out this house, right in that moment_.

Justin just smiled, of course, because even if he didn´t share his contempt for Ben and Michael´s happy fluffly middle-class kind of love, he was just as scared of becoming one of them.

The conversation seems a million light years ago.

 

\--

 

"There must be pretty amazing record stores in your neighbour, right?"

Justin laughs.

Even the electric touch of phone-filtered Justin laughing makes Brian feel light and miserable at the same time.

"Are you drunk? What kind of question is that?"

"I´m not drunk, I mean I am but that´s not what lies behind the question. I´m looking for a present for somebody."

"Somebody?" suspiciously.

"Not like that," of course not, Justin is just teasing, it´s never like that with Brian, but somehow Brian feels the urge to justify himself, to spill out secrets and excuses.

"What kind of music? I have a second-hand shop right below my flat, it´s run by the fattest on earth. Truly, I think he made into the Guiness or something."

"The Stooges. I figured it was time Gus started listening to the music he should."

"How daddy of you," Justin´s irony is never exactly irony but something much softer, filled with sunlight and open space, it´s always cheerful and innocently malicious like only a kid could manage. Brian has never found that tone of voice anywhere else.

"Yeah, right."

"Really? I could..."

"Nevermind. That was silly. Goodnight."

Brian is always the one who calls, and always the one who hangs up. It´s like Justin doesn´t exist between calls, doesn´t have an own independent self, or maybe Brian has just invented him and is just talking to shadows and ghosts.

(and some other times he is very much, too much aware of Justin´s life far from him- he fears hysterically every change, he fantasizes, he hopes and regrets, wonders how much longer Justin has let his hair grown, fears that Justin has grown even more beautiful without him, he guesses he still likes his coffee the same way but maybe we are not that young anymore and maybe Justin has grown out of his infatuation with german expressionism or maybe he still likes Joe Sacco and loud, rhythmical drum-based music and wearing scarfs much longer than winter lasts -Brian hates missing parts of Justin´s life and development, he hates thinking someday they´ll be strangers and this is how it´s going to end, how it´s going to be)

Brian is amazed at how little time forever really lasts.

 

\--

 

"Do you remember when we locked ourselves in your room and smoked, listening to all sorts of bad punk?" he asks Michael one day.

Maybe he is getting old; maybe he is just getting nostalgic.

(they came too late for punk, anyway; they should have been british or be born a decade after, instead the blank numb void of the eighties was their only country)

For a moment there is recognition (glaring and painful, like an open wound buried in salt) in Michael´s eyes -he remembers, yes, he misses it as well, he hates who he has become as much as Brian does- but it´s only the flickering of a lightbulb consumed long ago; Michael blinks and stares at Brian and it´s another person.

"Yeah, I remember," he dismissed the whole thing.

Brian sees that in this moment, it´s a lie. Michael doesn´t know what he is talking about.

Of course, Brian loves being misunderstood, it adds up to his legend.

Sometimes Brian likes to think of it as rewriting Jesus. Well, he did live with twelve men and was betrayed by a kiss. Brian likes blasphemy, but as the true aesthetic he is he likes the form of it rather than the content, he is not interesed in transgression unless it´s beautiful.

 

\--

 

He has a lot of words to say now that Justin is gone, and he always finds a lot of words a moment after he has hung the phone. Which is why he never tells Justin anything important, though Justin is waiting for it, day after day, in the silence at the other end of the line, in the worn-out chuckles, all the _hellos_ and _goodbyes_ between the noise of static.

Justin is sleepy most of the time they manage to talk so Brian figures he could slip one or two of those words and he wouldn´t even notice. Only that, of course, this is Justin Taylor we are talking about.

"I hate this," he tells Brian one particulary late call. "I hate talking to you."

"I can hang up."

"I hate talking to you and not being able to see you," there is a silence and Brian knows exactly what kind of face Justin is making now, thousands of miles away, and he regrets knowing it. "I hate being without you."

Brian shrugs, like Justin could see it.

There is another silence, then a heavy sight and then the click of the line going off.

His next call is not to Justin, but to the travel agency. He could book the flight throught the web but he tells himself, _hey, don´t underestimate the romanticism inherent to phone lines_.

Three days later Michael recieves _1969_ in vynyl through the mail, there is no return adress but the stamps tell him _New York, New York_...


End file.
